As it happened, though (and as several people pointed out to
Ray on Twitter), the image (a photograph by Craig Ruttle of AP) was actually of an earlier demonstration in March,when New York haredim protested against a change in the law in Israel removing
the special exemption of the ultra-Orthodox from military service.

This kind of
reckless retweeting was addressed by Padraig Reidy in an excellent piece here. It seems innocent enough – although it contributes to the excess of fog around
this conflict, obscuring the facts which we need to rationally debate. And we
might also wonder what rhetorical role the image of very Jewish-looking people
protesting against Israel plays in an anti-Zionist narrative.

However, a couple of days later, Ray tweeted something a bit different. When asked why the mass demonstration of Jews wasn't being reported in New York, Ray suggested it was because a "Jewish lobby" controls the media:

Later, Ray added that we needn't worry, because things would soon change:

Peter wrote to Lewisham People Before Profit, noting that the myth of Jewish control has been used for centuries to justify persecution, and asking what action the party might take given its claim to stand up for those overlooked by the powerful.

He got this back from leader John Hamilton:

So, Hamilton thinks the claim that an all-powerful Jewish lobby controls the media and people's minds and makes all politicians scared is "not in itself anti-semitic".

When Hamilton says "it is not surprising that Jews in general get blamed for supporting Israel", I wonder if he would say something similar about EDL attacks on Muslims. To me it seems simple: it is racism and not Israel that makes antisemites blame all Jews for the actions of Israel, just as it is racism that makes Islamophobes blame all Muslims for what jihadis do. There was plenty of antisemitism around before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and I don't think the Jews were any more to blame then.

Last week, it emerged that a local Lewisham young woman who converted
to Islam and prayed at Lewisham Islamic Centre has gone to Syria to join the jihadi
army Islamic State (usually known as ISIS or ISIL, Islamic State in Iraq and
the Levant), who, after being supported by Assad’s Ba’athist regime in Syria,
have now conquered a large swathe of Iraq (in alliance with Sunni and Ba’athist
sectarian militias) and are on the offensive against their former sponsor in
Syria.

The young woman’s Twitter profile chillingly has a photo
of her toddler son with an AK-47.

The Evening Standard
has published
a report on the young woman by Joshi Herrmann, based on extensive research
on social media and interviews with people connected to the mosque. It is very
interesting reading. It suggests that the woman may have been joined by a second Lewisham teen, probably the sixth British woman to join ISIS's foreign fighters.

Local resident and Londonist
editor Rachel Holdsworth, felt that
the article insinuates that the mosque is extreme while saying that the imams
are not in fact radical. Al-Jazeera’s Simon Hooper describes
it as sensationalised and recycling tenuous connections. However, I felt that,
although the framing is unavoidably sensational, the article does a good job of
exploring the complexity, including the extent and the limits of jihadi
ideology in the mosque.

Herrmann shows how the attendees and the roster of preachers at
mosques such as Lewisham are fluid in a way that would not be typical of
Christian congregations, but that the Lewisham mosque is viewed as “hot”
compared to others. However, once the young and angry convert was drawn into
jihadi ideology, she found the mosque and its imams too tepid and “soft”.

the local source
suggests that radicals operate independently of the centre because they regard
the imam and senior figures there as “soft”. “I think a lot of them [radicals
in the community] don’t even go to the mosque. As soon as they see people at
the mosque like the imam going soft and asking people to vote and doing stuff
in the community they branch off,” she says. It is notable that a
representative for the mosque has attended Holocaust Memorial Day, at the
suggestion of the council.

This was apparently
also the case with Michael Adebolajo, who felt the imams were too
co-operative with the police. She then left in order to find the real thing,
which she has tragically found in Syria.

Gender politics seems also to have played a part in her
development, with some of Herrmann’s interviewees talking about how a prevailing
patriarchal culture in the mosque was one of the things that turned her away
from its brand of Islam and towards a more radical version.

There is a danger that circulating these stories will fuel the
potential for attacks from far right racists capitalising on these sorts of
incidents. The Dad’s Army fascists of Britain
First and the EDL splinter group South
East Alliance have been targeting mosques and other Islamic sites in Kent
and London. We need to be vigilant against such attacks, and act in solidarity
with Muslims in our community under siege.
But it is also right that we are vigilant and critical about the ideas circulating
in our community and that we work to make them marginal.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Auschwitz wasn’t any kind of positive learning experience, and the overwhelmingly majority of the Jews who had anything to do with the Holocaust learned nothing from it because they were killed by it. It wasn’t a learning experience and it wasn’t an experience which made people better, or more left-wing, or more anti-racist. There was no silver lining to the Holocaust. --David Hirsh

I am not going to say anything here for now about the current, awful round of Israel/Palestine conflict. I haven't worked out my thoughts and feel too much anguish to be able to articulate a response. The denseness of the fog of this war - and the manifold untruths, fake pics, claims, counterclaims and viral lies circulating in the media and especially on social media - makes it hard to call what's actually going on.

But something that I do want to comment on is the inappropriate comparisons people make in discussing the situation.

For instance, I've seen pro-Israelis claim Israel is experiencing a 9/11 24/7, because of Hamas rockets, and I've seen anti-Israelis claim that Palestine is experiencing the same thing. Of course, the notion is ridiculous: 3000 people died in a single day in the September 2001 attack (not counting the rescue workers who died later as a result). 3000 is greater the death toll of the entire Second Intifada. Even Assad's Ghouta chemical attack killed only half that number; even Syria is not experiencing a 9/11 every day.

But for me the most pernicious comparison is of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. Pernicious because the two events are utterly incomparable, and additionally offensive because it uses Jewish suffering against Jews.

Melvin Goodman, one of those ex-CIA paleocon wingnuts beloved of Counterpunch, wrote a stupid piece there comparing the two, for example noting that unemployment was a problem in the Ghetto, just like Gaza. Marginally smarter, Glenn Greenwald didn't invoke Warsaw, but did compare Netanyahu to Goebbels, then disingenuously added that to compare two things isn't to say they're the same. A retired academic writing for MondoWeiss uses the Warsaw Ghetto because an Auschwitz comparison is not quite right; what's going on in Gaza, thankfully, is "not exactly the same" as the actual death camps, but is comparable to the Ghetto.

Here's some more examples:

@idangazit you disgusting apologist for massacre ethnic cleansing collective punishment THIS is the Warsaw Ghetto Gazans the new Jews #Gaza
— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) July 18, 2014

Israel has dropped more bombs on #Gaza in a few days than the Nazis dropped on Warsaw in WWII. Defiling the memory of Holocaust victims #IDF
— Marcais (@IrelandUncut) July 17, 2014

In Warsaw Adam Czerniaków commits suicide: "They demand me to kill children of my nation with my own hands. I have nothing to do but to die"
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 23, 2014

In the Warsaw Ghetto, 400,000 Jews were forced into an area of 3.4 square km (1.3 square miles). Gaza is 139 square miles with a population of 1.8 million. The population density of Gaza is high: 13,069.1/sq mi, twice that of Tokyo (but much less than, say Manila's 111,000, Chennai's 67,000, Macau's 55,000, or Paris' 54,000). The population density of the Warsaw Ghetto was 307,692.

In the Ghetto, nearly a quarter died of starvation and disease (that's comparable to 450,000* Gazans). Of those that remained, most were taken to Treblinka and killed, along with 2000 Romani people and some million other Jews. 7000 Jews were taken from the Ghetto to the camp every day in the summer of 1942. Around 20,000 survived after less than three years.

That is what genocide looks like. I don't think that is what Gaza, however bad it gets, looks like. I understand your anguish about Gaza, but please don't make this kind of comparison.

For pointing out that these comparisons are not on, here is the kind of response one gets:

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

This is a guest post by Spencer Sunshine. It is extracted from the recently published Political Research Associatesreport Constructing Campus Conflict. I strongly recommend that report, and in particular its opening section "Setting the Scene" by Chip Berlet. A later part of the report consists of profiles of US universities and of key groups and individuals involved in propagating or campaigning against anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim racism on campus. The profile of Alison Weir and her organisation "If Americans Knew" is from that section. ---B.

Few political writers today appear in the publications of both the Left
and the Far Right. One rare exception is Alison Weir, the founder of If
Americans Knew. Her denunciations of the vast power that Israel and its
supporters in the United States allegedly wield resonate on the Far Right with
figures like former Klansman and politician David Duke, the Holocaust-denying
Institute for Historical Review, antisemitic talk radio host Clay Douglas, and
the Pacifica Forum at the University of Oregon, which the Southern Poverty Law
Center lists as a hate group. (1)

At the same time, she can be found on the Left in the pages of Z Magazine, Project Censored, and CounterPunch. She has been praised by Socialist Worker, broadcast on
affiliates of the Pacifica radio network, and spoken at the Left Forum
conference. (2)

Weir is a regular speaker on college campuses. She has appeared at Harvard
Law School, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University,
Stanford University, American University, the University of Chicago, Vassar
College, and elsewhere. In 2003, she received death threats after she and Hatem
Bazian debated with David Meir-Levi and Eric Sirkin at the University of
California, Berkeley about how to achieve peace in the Middle East. (3)

At first glance, Weir seems like a typical Palestine solidarity activist.
She says that she founded IF Americans Knew (IAK) after she visited the
Occupied Territories in 2001 and witnessed numerous human rights violations
that were not covered in the United States press. IAK is sometimes portrayed as
a media watchdog group and its tagline is “What Every American Needs to Know
About Israel-Palestine.”

But a closer inspection of Weir and IAK reveals disturbing elements. The
main focus of their work is not on Palestinian conditions or rights, but on the
power of the so-called Israel lobby in the United States. Weir describes the
U.S. media’s tilt toward Israel as possibly “the most monumental cover-up in
media history.”(2) While she admits that a number of factors may account for
this alleged pro-Israel bias, she consistently targets the Jewish backgrounds
of editors and reporters.(4) Even if they think they are unbiased, she says,
unconscious family influences are likely to sway their opinions. (5)

IAK’s criticisms of Zionism and Israel dovetail with traditional
antisemitic narratives, and Weir often cites antisemitic writers and
publications as her sources. When asked if the work of antisemitic authors
including Israel Shamir, Gilad Atzmon, and Kevin MacDonald were truly legitimate,
she replied, “Yes. I suggest people read their work for themselves.” (6)

In 2005, IAK analyzed the coverage of deaths in the Israel-Palestine
conflict in the New York Times and
other newspapers, and concluded the outlets had a pro-Israel bias. (7) It met
with New York Times Public Editor
Daniel Okrent, who did not accept their findings. (8) The Committee for
Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, a pro-Israel media-watchdog
group, criticized IAK’s report for methodological errors. (9)

In 2008, another controversy erupted after the public library in
Greenwich, Connecticut cancelled a talk by Weir that had been scheduled by a
member of IAK in one of the library’s public meeting rooms. Under pressure from
free-speech advocates, such as the American Library Association, the talk was
rescheduled. The controversy received national media attention. (10)

In 2009, based on stories that had appeared in a Swedish newspaper, Weir
published articles in CounterPunch and
the Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs accusing Israel of harvesting organs from Palestinians. (11) Weir’s claim was widely
denounced as a modern version of the antisemitic blood libel—the myth that Jews
use the blood of sacrificed Christian children to make Passover matzos.

Weir says “Israel’s core identity is based on ethnic and religious
discrimination by a colonial, immigrant group,” and that it has an
“exclusionist identity.” (12) She describes the 1948 founding of Israel as “one
of the modern world’s most successful ethnic cleansings,” and a “holocaust” for
Palestinians; elsewhere she implies this holocaust continues today. (13)

She has also said that “Israel struck first in all its wars except one.
Historically, it was the initiator of conflict.” (14) IAK writers such as Mazin
Qumsiyeh, Jeffrey Blankfort, and Kathy Christison and the late
Bill Christison claim that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was planned and executed
by groups that are identified as being overwhelmingly Jewish.

Weir has been on the board of NewPolicy.org, an offshoot of the New Policy
PAC, whose mission is “to work with citizens, lawmakers, and administration
officials to implement longstanding American positions on the Arab-Israeli
conflict in the interest of enhancing American security” (15) whose antisemitic
website http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.com/ includes assertions that
Israel was behind the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In
one radio interview, Weir also referred to “the significant role that Zionists
played in pushing the U.S. into World War I,” and said, “these same groups
[are] trying to push us into a war with Iran.” (16)

IAK claims that Israel, together with its supporters in the United States,
controls many aspects of the U.S. government. Weir says, “The Israel lobby
became far more powerful than those who originally tried to oppose it: the
State Department, the Pentagon, the oil lobby.” (17) IAK board member Paul
Findley (a former Republican congressional representative from Illinois)
describes the United States as in “bondage to Israel’s misdeeds.” (18) Weir
summarizes the situation by saying, “What Israel says, our media repeat. What
Israel demands, our government gives. What Israel wants, its well-greased lobby
delivers.” (19)

IAK is careful never to blame “the Jews”; instead it consistently refers
to subsets of Jews such as “the Zionists,” “the Israel lobby,” or “the
neocons.” American neoconservatives in particular are specifically identified
as being overwhelmingly Jewish. (20) Jewish subgroups are described
consistently as elites who subvert national sovereignty. The “dual loyalties”
of these subgroups is a common theme on the IAK website. “Neocons” in the
United States and “oligarchs” in Russia receive special attention. Weir says
that IAK “is opposed to discrimination in all its forms,” and one of her
articles is subtitled “Antisemitism is Wrong.” However, the article does not
address the issue other than to say that people should not be dissuaded from
criticizing Israel because they fear being called antisemitic. (21) When asked
about what constitutes an antisemitic view that she would oppose, she
identified statements which refer explicitly and collectively to “the Jews.” (22)

IAK narratives are consistent with the antisemitic conspiracisms of the
past century, including the claims that Jews are clannish and cabal-like, have
dual loyalties, control the media and the government, steal the body parts of
non-Jews, and start wars, often in countries where they are a minority and
where the wars are against the country’s interests. Following a classic
populist narrative, Weir says that the American people must be informed about
this situation to start “reclaiming our nation, our principles and our souls.”
(23) One email sent by the Council for the National Interest and signed by Weir
even deploys one of the most famous antisemitic images, claiming that liberal J
Street and the conservative American Israel Public Affairs Committee are “two
tentacles of the same lobby.” (24)

Like many populist and conspiratorial narratives, some of IAK’s
information is true and has potentially important things to contribute to
public discourse; some of it is misleading, biased, or suffers from serious
omissions; and much of it repeats traditional antisemitic conspiracisms. Alison
Weir is not a recognized scholar on Middle East affairs, and campus groups and
activists working for recognition and rights for Palestinians would be well
advised to seek out more legitimate sources of information on the conflict than
IAK. (25)